The Mouth Agape

The Mouth Agape French La gueule ouverte is a 1974 French drama film directed by Maurice Pialat. It depicts, in a cinematic realist fashion, a woman going through a terminal illness and also dealing with the tumorous lives of her husband and son. It was one of the least commercially successful of Pilats films. It was Pilats third film of the ten that he directed before his death in January 2003. It is also known as The Gaping Mouth and The Gaping Maw.

Monique Mlinand portrays a woman in the late stages of terminal illness. Her son Philippe Philippe Lotard, Philippes wife Nathalie Nathalie Baye, and her husband Roger Hubert Deschamps attempt to comfort her as she navigates through her ordeal. However, those two closest men in her personal life begin to get more involved in their relationships with multiple mistresses. Her husband flirts with customers in their clothing and haberdashery store while her son flirts with her nurses. The film incorporates elements of Mozarts opera Cos fan tutte to poetic effect, relating to these scenes. In the end scenes, she goes through several final, deeply emotional moments as the disease claims her life.Some critics have viewed the film as semiautobiographical, and it was described as such in a Masters of Cinema rerelease. Pialats mother died in the same real place as the one depicted in the film, and the Philippe character is somewhat similar to Pialat himself such that he could be an author surrogate. ........

Source: Wikipedia